As I write these words of
Clare dying, I feel like crying too, because the story is over. But, is
it? The Nuns immediately got the body ready for all the friends of Clare
to view. First they removed her heart and placed it in a flowered bowl
made of wood. Had they remembered her words, "I have the Crucified Jesus
in my heart?"

The Funeral Mass was celebrated on Sunday, the 18th.
The preacher, a Franciscan Priest from Bevagna, instead of giving the
homily he had prepared, found himself delivering the most extraordinary
eulogy, extolling Clare’s sanctity and selfless giving to all who came,
never counting the cost. As the words poured from his lips, they became
his and he found himself realizing the gift the Father had given him; he
was eulogizing a Saint. His brother Franciscans meanwhile looked away,
disapprovingly. They were blinded and deafened by the anger they
harbored at having been ordered to be here in the first place. It turned
out, they were here only out of obedience to Clare’s brother Francesco,
their Chaplain. And so, they, too, had been called to share in a gift,
but their "No!" robbed them of it.

That evening, the Nuns opened her heart preparing it
to place in a Reliquary. To their amazement, Saint Clare of Montefalco’s words came alive;
there before them were the marks of Jesus Passion! Cradled inside the
softness of her grand heart, was the Perfect Form of Jesus Crucified,
even to the Crown of Thorns clearly evidenced on his Head, and the lance
Wound in His Precious Side. The Lord had not only planted His Crucified
Body within the recesses of her heart, but the painful evidence of some
of His Sufferings, the means of flagellation in a form of ligaments or
tendons, the whip that was used to scourge our Beloved Lord, with the
ends showing the metal balls and the jagged bones used to rip our Lord’s
Skin from His Bones.

The news of this miracle spread! As my husband says,
"Tell an Italian and you tell the world." (Author’s note: I’m Italian.
Mother Angelica is Italian. We’re trying to tell the whole world. Maybe
that’s what a Christian is supposed to do.) The following Monday, an old
adversary, Fra Pietro di Salomone, made his way to the Vicar of the
diocese of Spoleto, Msgr. Berengario. He denounced the Nuns, claiming
their findings were willfully misrepresented. On Tuesday Monsignor left
for Montefalco. Upon arriving there, he immediately called together
theologians, lawyers and doctors. The heart was carefully investigated
and they all unanimously concluded that the "marks" were not of an
explainable scientific nature or of human understanding, in other words,
a phenomena, or as we are so happy to say, God leaving another miracle
in our midst. There was not only a document drawn by the Church and
affirmed by science, but the civil authorities did their own
investigation and issued their findings. The heart of Clare did in fact
contain this extraordinary sign and it was not the result of any false
doings.

Another phenomena or as we prefer to call it,
miraculous sign, was the finding of three stones inside her bladder.
When the Nuns further investigated they discovered in the gall bladder
three gall stones the size of large hazel nuts perfectly equal in size,
color, shape and weight. They were found to weigh all the same, one
weighing as much as two, two as three, one as three. The Sisters at the
Shrine tell us this sign was left to show the love Clare had for the
Blessed Trinity. But we wonder if it was not also, possibly to explain
the Blessed Trinity as much as The Triune God can be explained. One
Person equal to Each of the Other Two Persons, as well as equal to the
Two Combined of the other Persons of the Trinity. In the sign left by
the Lord, in the body of Saint Clare of Montefalco, the three weighed the same as one,
the two as one, the one as two or as three, all equal. Coincidence?

As
we enter the garden, there is a feeling of His Presence and that of the
Saint that lingers here among the rose bushes, the other flowering
plants and the tree Bob and I lovingly call the Grandma Tree. We have
coined this name for the tree, as it dates back to the time of St.
Clare. One of the frescoes on the wall as we approached the garden,
depicts one of St. Clare’s Visions. It shows Jesus handing Clare a
stick, asking her to water it. Out of obedience, telling no one of her
Vision, she watered the lifeless stick. It brought and continues to
bring forth blossoms and little nuts, these 700 years, from which the
Nuns make rosaries. At one time, they only sent the rosaries to other
Augustinian Monasteries, but now they are available to visiting
pilgrims, as long as there are nuts available for the Nuns to make the
rosaries. As I said before, there is something about this Saint. Years
28 after pilgrims have gone on pilgrimage with us, they still
request additional rosaries for some needy member of their family. Clare
is working through her Nuns and their faithfulness.

Viewer Comments:

Dear Bob and
Penny:
We are a Chilean family, presently living in Germany, and we would like to
ask you some questions.

We
would like to know how we could obtain a copy of the series that are shown
on EWTN.

We have the blessing to be able to pilgrimage to some important places like
the Divine Mercy Sanctuary in Cracow, Poland. And only a couple of months
ago, I was in Montefalco, Italy visiting the Church where the body of Saint
Clare is. We purchased some of the Montefalco Rosaries (the ones made from
the seeds from the trees in the garden).That series shown on television, are like the main food of the day, we want
to obtain them.

Our mother language is Spanish, and we would like to have that series in DVD
in Spanish version.
Thanks in advance for your reply, we appreciate it.
Receive God’s blessings.

M.B. Germany

Purchase
the DVD on
Saint Clare of Montefalco
and the book Saints and Other Powerful Women in the Church for $23.95
Regular Price $35.00
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"If you seek the Cross of Christ,
take my heart;
there you will find the Suffering Lord."

Pope
Benedict XVI "Take
courage!
Fix your gaze on our saints."

Come with us to the beautiful
Umbrian mountains to Montefalco, Italy.

Learn the life of Saint Clare of Montefalco, Founder
of the order of The Holy Cross Scenes from the Augustinian convent in Montefalco. Venerate her incorrupt body.
See
the Crucified Christ, and the Crown of Thorns formed inside the muscle of her heart.

She had a vision of Our Lord Jesus carrying His
Cross, looking very weary. He said to her, "I am looking for someone I can trust with
My Cross. " She said, "You can
trust me." He thrust His Cross into her heart. For the rest of
her life, she suffered Agony and Ecstasy.

Visit the garden and
see the miraculous tree which still bears fruit today.
Discover the story of the Montefalco Rosaries made from
these nuts. They come from a stick, watered under obedience to Our
Lord Jesus which is over 700 years old and still bears fruit.
Go inside the cloister where she
lived and died.
Meet her community
of Nuns, who joyfully still live the rule.

Clare was born
to Damiano and Iacopa Vengente in the year 1268. She was one of
four children. The eldest, her sister Giovanna, established a hermitage
in the year 1271. Giovanna was twenty years old when she and her friend
Andreola set out to live a life of prayer and sacrifice in the tiny
hermitage her father built for them. In 1274, it was granted approval
by the ecclesiastical authorities. Giovanna was then allowed to receive
candidates.

The first
candidate was her sister Clare, all of six years old. Her holy parents
had great devotion to our Lord and His Mother. That and the ongoing,
living example of her sister Giovanna and companion Andreola, whom she
visited often at the hermitage, surely contributed greatly to Clare's
desire to love and serve the Lord through a life of prayer. She was a
very alive little girl whom everyone found genuine, perceptive and
sensible beyond her years, as well as extremely lovable. From the very
beginning, though she was much younger (Giovanna seventeen years her
senior), Clare kept up with her two companions, spiritually, prayerfully
and penitentially, almost surpassing the mortification practiced by the
others. From her earliest childhood years, there had been a burning
love inside her for our dear Lord, especially in His Passion. This fire
inside her was what gave her the energy and the zeal, her strength to
live a life that would be demanding for most, but near impossible for a
little girl.

Although she was
a saintly little girl, she was a little girl with a very healthy
appetite. She was even known to have to fight her craving for some of
her mother's homemade dishes. Because of this fondness for certain
foods, Clare made a point of strictly observing not only an ongoing, but
an increasingly more stringent fast and abstinence during Lent than what
was observed by the others in the hermitage.

As no Religious
Rule had been established in the hermitage, it is all the more
remarkable that Clare faithfully practiced strict obedience to her
sister Giovanna, the leader of the group. Once when she broke the rule
of silence prescribed to the Community by Giovanna, Clare imposed on
herself a penance of standing in a bucket of ice cold water with her
arms outstretched high above her head, praying the Lord's Prayer one
hundred times.

In 1278, Clare's
friend Marina entered the Convent. She was to be followed shortly
after, by others, Tommasa, Paola, Illuminata, and Agnese (like our Sr.
Agnese of today). This became a problem. Oh what we would do for such
problems in our Church today! With more and more girls requesting
admittance into their company, it was soon evident they would need a
larger hermitage. Giovanna consulted with the members of her Community
and other individuals as well, and after prayer and fasting, they
decided to move to a hill nearer to the town. Damiano, Giovanna and
Clare's father, again set about the building of the new hermitage. He
never finished it, however, as the Lord called him Home. It is believed
he died in 1280 or 1281. Clare was 12 years old.

On November 22,
1291, Clare's sister Giovanna went to dwell with her Lord and Master,
Jesus. People, soon after her death, began calling her Blessed. Many
of our Saints before the twelfth century, were proclaimed Saints by
popular demand of the townspeople, because of the lives the Saints had
lived; and how they had been touched and changed by the Saints'
example.

For Clare, the
loss of her sister was to cause her pain unlike anything she had ever
experienced before. Not even at the death of her father, had Clare
cried. Not even when her mother died in Clare's Monastery, did Clare
cry. She loved her mother and father very much, but she had not cried.
Now she cried for three days and nights. Inconsolable, allowing no one
inside of her, she grieved alone, privately. The Nuns were puzzled to
see her cry at the death of her sister, as she had not cried for her
parents. Concerned and troubled, they approached her asking her the
reason for her tears.

She replied,
"How is it you do not understand? I weep neither for her (Giovanna)
soul or her body, but only for myself. Isn't that who we cry for?
Giovanna was to me an example and a mirror of life; everyday she spoke
to me of God and of always new and profound and spiritual matters. For
this I weep, for nothing else."

The Bishop's
representative arrived for the election of a new Abbess. The Nuns
unanimously chose Clare. She wept, feeling totally unworthy, and begged
them to choose someone else, someone who was holy and wise, claiming she
was neither. She had been unsuccessful when she had requested to be
allowed to be among the extern sisters during her sister's lifetime,
arguing that she was not holy enough to be part of the cloister. Now
she was pleading again of her unworthiness, only to have her sister Nuns
turn a deaf ear to her objections. She asked the Nuns to present her
petition, to the Bishop, stating she was unqualified spiritually and
totally lacking the necessary wisdom to be Abbess. To her dismay not
only did they refuse, but her brother Francesco, to whom she then
turned, refused as well. Her many friends from Spoleto, knowing
first-hand her holiness and virtue, also denied her last ditch effort to
have her unworthiness brought before the Bishop.

All the Saints
teach one important lesson, from the Old Testament to today, God uses
who they are to do His Work on earth. I can see this persistence of
Clare, being molded for His Design. [Author's note: Whenever we wonder
"why us" the answer we get is, "Because I chose you, no other reason.
Yes, there are others more worthy, but I have chosen you. Now just say
`Yes,' and get on with it!"]

"Call me Clare.
I am simply Clare," she would plead. She continued to choose the most
menial chores for herself, performing them humbly and joyfully. One
Friday, when the chapter of the Community was held to discuss the
matters of the Monastery, as a point of instruction (or possibly as an
example), Clare knelt in the middle of the room and ordered the Sisters
to give her the discipline (Name of the small whip or scourge used by
some austere Religious orders in penitential practice as a means of
bodily mortification) in memory of the Lord's Passion. Like so many
before her, Clare had the over-riding desire to share in our Lord's
Passion, praying she could take some of the Stripes of Jesus on herself,
offering herself as a soothing balm for His Wounds.

Powerful
Saints and Role ModelsPope Benedict
XVI urges us to study the "Saints - true Role Models for our times."

Introductory Offer Save 12%
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Saints and Other Powerful Men and
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Saint Clare of montefalco rosary not available
We have the special montefalco rosary not available made by the Nuns of Saint Clare of
Montefalco from the nuts of the trees in the convent gardens.
To order click below $20.00 each

Bob and Penny have taken 10 of the
most powerful women in the Church of yesterday and today, and shared them in
a way that can be understood by all. They write about these women in their
simple and engaging style, which has placed them among the most popular
Catholic writers of the day.
Each of these 10 women are Role Models for the faithful of today. Read
how they suffered rejection by their peers, discrimination because of sex,
and how they rose above all of it to become movers and shakers of the world.
There is a common thread, which gave them the strength to go on when others
would have backed down -their devotion to the Holy Eucharist and Mother Mary
and an unbending commitment to their vows, most especially that of
obedience.

Saint Clare of Assisi
Sister Moon to
Francis’ Brother Sun Foundress of the Poor Clares - Miracle of the
EucharistSaint Clare of Montefalco
Mystic
- Read how they found the Crucified Lord and see the means of Crucifixion
they found in her heart - Incorrupt BodySaint
Catherine of Siena Doctor
of Church - Stigmatist Mystic - brought Papacy back to Rome - Mystically
Married to JesusSaint
Rita of CasciaRole Model for
women of every generation - Saint of the Impossible - Incorrrupt BodySaint
Teresa of Avila Reformer
of the Carmelites - Doctor of the Church - Mystic - Transverberation of
the heartSaint
BernadetteVisionary
of Lourdes - Incorrupt bodySaint
Thérèse of Lisieux Doctor of the
Church - Saint of the Little Way - Spends her Heaven doing good on Earth
New
chapter on recently proclaimed
Saint
Katharine Drexel Saint
of the Native and African AmericansSr.
Briege McKennaHealing MinistryMother Angelica Foundress
- Eternal Word Television Network
WEWN Radio - Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament

Down through the ages, men and
women have given their lives to carry out the command of Jesus. Bob
and Penny Lord have tracked the lives of 12 men who have said, Yes!
to Jesus, and dedicated their lives to that Yes!, some at the cost of
their lives. Their biographies parallel the times of crisis in our
Church. Bob and Penny have set their sights on the man and the time in
which he lived. They have started at the beginning of our infant
Church, with one of the greatest adventurers our Faith has ever known, Paul
the Apostle, and continued to our present day, ending with a Paul of the
Electronic Age, Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen.They have focus on the problems in the world and the Church at these
crucial times in our history, the men the Lord sent to save the world and
the Church from destruction, the struggles they encountered along the way,
and the ultimate triumph of Jesus through His Powerful Men in the Church.

Saint Paul Jesus
spoke to him; he converted, and archenemy of the Christians became Apostle
to Gentile WorldSaint
Augustine Doctor
of the Church - Sinner turned Saint - Read how his mother prayed him to
holiness.Saint
Francis of Assisi
Most like Jesus -lived the Gospel life - Brother Sun - Stigmatist -
Founder of FranciscansSaint
Anthony
Finder of Lost Souls - Great homilist, Mystic, Hammer of Heretics, Miracle
of the EucharistSaint
Peregrine
The Cancer Saint, Incorrupt bodySaint
John of the CrossReformer of
Carmelites - Doctor of the Church - Mystic - Poet - Soldier of ChristSaint
John Vianney Patron
Saint of Parish Priests, had visions of Mother Mary - did battle with the
devil.Saint
John Bosco
Mystic - Visionary - Prophesied these last days - Pied-piper of lost
children of the streets.Saint
Maxmilian Kolbe
- founded Knights of the Immaculata, died as a Martyr in Auschwitz.Saint
Miguel ProMartyr of Mexico of
the 20th centuryBlessed
Padre PioVisionary,
Stigmatist for 50 yrs, bi-located, perfect confessor, transverberation of
the heart.Archbishop
Fulton J. Sheen
- First Televangelist -
A Prophet of these latter days-maligned and misunderstood.

Code BSM 75
Photos 528 Pages PaperbackISBN 0-926143-09-3 -
$17.95

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